Challenge 2, Part 8: Some Introductions

Aelene

Oh, no! This is that disgusting show Phaedra keeps going on about! Did the goddess lie to me? What is going on?

Aelene stumbles from the Green Room cell she was place in and into a stage over an intimidating pool of water. Her armor badly damaged and her shoulder still punctured, her make-shift bandaging giving way, she falls to her knees. A naked drow girl comes up to her, “<Are you okay?>”

“<Took a spear to the shoulder before being brought here. It’s mostly stopped bleeding. Mostly.>”

Aelene feels the healing magics flow through her wound. Maybe this is the beautiful heroine I am to fall in love with? Aelene looks at the others. A fetching blonde hoppalong. A strong looking luchtoni. A mermaid with some kind of leg-granting enchantment? Not one, but two humans? Wow, I’ve never seen a human before in the flesh. Only on television or in my books.

An actual mermaid is standing by a naked sea elf with a silvery starburst scar over her heart. The mermaid speaks, “You do know English, right?”

“I speak the Common tongue, as well as Elvish and Sylvan. What is English?”

The sea elf smiles at that, “<I’m sorry. I trust your plan to protect your post was worth it?>”

“Mistress, English please. I know you don’t have that excuse. Welcome, Aelene, to Harem Hotel. You now have the privilege of being Harper’s property. Why don’t you introduce yourself to the audience. What were the questions again? Oh yes, name, profession, last time you had sex, the contestant you want to have sex with the most, your relationship with The Mistress?”

“Wait, what? Property? No. That is not what I was promised.”

“<I will explain everything when we are dismissed, okay, Aelene. Our fates are intertwined, but I have no desire to treat you as property. Just answer the questions so we can move on.>”

“I am Aelenetheria, Knight-Commander of Nimlith Grove, elder daughter of Kaelisterie, 47th Queen of the Copse-Wood Throne. And I am nobody’s property.”

Summoning her double-bladed scimitar from her inventory, she rushes the sea elf. The elf blocks her blows with a magical shield. Caster. Dangerous. Got to press the advantage. Don’t let her get far enough away to start casting real spells.

So, Aelene is quite surprised by a sword being drawn from the sea elf’s inventory and a bladesong dance begun. The footwork fast and elegant. The body movements perfectly timed to dodge Aelene’s incoming swings. With a couple of smacks with the flat of the longsword, her battered armor will not handle this for long.

As she launches another dodges ****, Aelene asks, “<What level are you? Your skill should not be possible.>”

“Level 8.” The point of the sea elf’s blade rests just above her collarbone, past the defenses of her armor.

Level 8? She’s around half of my mother’s age and she is already Level 8? That IS impossible.

“I surrender. <You are the one the goddess promised. I submit.>”

“<Good. Sorry if this sounds weird. Again, I’ll explain everything later.>” Then, to the crowd, she asks as she puts away her weapon, “And everyone thought that demonstration was super sexy, right? No need for a punishment?”

A murmur of agreement results. Aelene is suddenly jerked away and back into position. The mermaid simply asks, “The other questions?”

“Oh..., uh..., the perverted questions. I am a virgin, as my mother had yet the need to use me in a marriage pact. If by contestants you mean the others, if I must choose, one of the humans, I guess. I mean, I am well aware that hoppalongs are extremely good at performing sexual acts, but there is just something so, I don’t know, exotic about humans. That question and it’s answer are moot points, for I have been promised to the Mistress by divine providence, even if this perversion is the method by which the goddess, in her wisdom, decided to enact her will.”

Aelene looks around. Most of the women look confused. Did I say something weird? The sea elf replies, “<Great. If you can, pop off your armor at least enough let Skye or Dinah take a look at your shoulder. We’ll figure this all out this afternoon. And, once again, I’m sorry.>”

“The other girl, a blast from Harper’s past. She hunted monsters, now she will seek her owner’s pleasure. Everyone give a warm returning welcome for Matilda!”

Mattie

Well, good news, bad news. Good news: I’m not dead. Assuming the Mistress is the tall naked kinda-fish lady with the scar and not the ridiculous breasted mermaid, she is hot. Bad news: This is a wacky season I just got put on. Like only two of them are still human?

“Mattie? Mattie!” The scarred kinda-fish lady rushes up and gives Mattie a surprisingly light hug, “I’m so, so sorry. You don’t deserve this. Granted, none of you deserve this, but especially not you. Not after...”

“Mistress, don’t ruin the surprise! Give her some space so she can re-introduce herself to the audience. Our standard contestant questions are name, profession, last time you had sex, the contestant you want to have sex with the most, your relationship with The Mistress?”

Time to lay on the southern belle charm extra thick. “Well, howdy, ya’ll. The name is Captain Matilda McMatterson, but my friends call me Mattie. I am a field analyst for the US Army, Special Forces, Reaper Division. We are...”

“Reaper Division? You mean the guys that tried to blow me up with a tank a couple of seconds after asking for my immediate surrender?” the bunny girl with the rockin’ tits exclaims.

“From what I experienced during the challenge, the Reaper Division should not have been aware of your position unless you were grabbed from a very large population center, someplace very sensitive like a military base, or used a whole lot of magic to activate our nationwide background magic detection system. Heavy artillery isn’t called in outside of **** spikes in magic activity. So, what exactly did you do?”

“Um..., I still have some magic left for the day...”

“Tina, it’s okay. You didn’t know. Mattie, please continue.”

“Thank you, we are tasked with preventing the use of magic and the reformation of the weave in our dimension. If magic ever returns to our world, annihilation will soon follow. I’m the best small arms sharpshooter in my unit. For that next question, Ms. Host, define sex for me.”

“If you answer the sex question wrong, I’ll just **** the correct answer out of you.”

The kind of fish lady shoots daggers at the mermaid. Ugh, I hate to admit it, but they’ll probably **** it out regardless.

“So, last time I had sex was maybe a day ago by my perspective. Time got a little fuzzy for me since then. So, I was kidnapped for a different season of this nightmare show. We just finished our latest challenge, which was to cum as many times as you can while riding a Sybian with the Platonic ideal of my cock, before everything went fubar. So, it was awful and disgusting, but I did cum once so I guess it counts as sex. Assuming the Mistress wouldn’t get too jealous, the girl with the fins looks pretty good. Nevermind, just saw the shark teeth. Ouch. The purple girl. I’d pick the purple girl. I generally like being the tall one. Not that I won’t mind you being taller than me, Mistress. This is WAAAY better than the other season. Glad that fox fucker died. For that last question, the Mistress has a familiar face, once I get past her being blue, but I have no idea who you are. I guess you are going to **** it out of my subconscious?” Mattie briefly catches the looks from the others before she hears the response. They know something.

“That’s right. Let’s have it.”

“So, the Mistress was the one guy that I ever considered trying to be straight for. I know it wouldn’t have worked out, but that fact that I thought I should try is real. I got a competitive shooting scholarship for UST and was planning on enlisting after getting my undergrad, so I joined the campus militia. He was my drill sergeant for my freshman year and he was great. He nearly screwed up his graduation plan when he...”

Mattie feels her mouth stop as Francis speaks up, “Ariel, please stop. If Mattie wants to say the next bit, she needs to be able to it on her own accord.”

It’s Mattie’s turn to offer a hug “Sarge! Wow. You look great. I mean, wow.” Mattie winces when Sarge returns her hug a little too hard.

“Oh, sorry. Forgot about your ribs in the moment. You okay with a little magic? Skye?”

“Ain’t getting free of magic anyhow, right Sarge? You got something to help the bruises patch up, I’m all for it.” The purple girl touches Mattie and the soldier feels her sides knit back to normal. She can breathe again.

Mattie keeps hugging as she finishes her explanation, “So, a few weeks before the spring semester was up, a few frat guys was beating on this nerd right by the campus militia shooting range. I jumped in to try and stop them, only to get smacked around myself. Three dudes with arms bigger than my thighs against one little ol’ me meant that I was gonna lose even if I actually had some proper CQC training. Ended up in the hospital for like a week with a fractured skull and a concussion. Sergeant Francis here heard the scuffle, pulled out his silly little bow and arrow, and scared the shit out of them. I mean, that warning shot was placed perfectly. He dragged those bastards out to the militia commandant. Almost missed his oral exams to testify in court against ‘em. They got convicted of ****. Should of gotten more time, but Sarge here stopped them before they actually did anything too heinous. Then he graduated and moved home. School militia changed policies on squad formation starting my sophomore year. Sure, lumping students into squads based on majors normally makes sense, but not in my case. Got stuck with a bunch of mag hag English major types. Super miserable. Ended up transferring to the local folks militia branch instead.”

“Sorry, but mag hag?” the wolf-girl asks.

Maybe not the best question, but sure. “Girls that join the militia just to try to pick up guys. They’d volunteer to load magazines for the guys at the range instead of, you know, actually doing their drills. Don’t know what they hated more about me: that I wanted to actually do the training we all signed up for or that I was trying to date one of the other girls on the competitive shooting team.”

Francis finally ends the hug, noting, “You look good too, Mattie. We’ll talk after this is over. And it’s Harper now.”

“Swapped out on old lady name for another, eh Sarge? That’s cool. Looking forward to it.”

Mattie turns around and finds the empty chair by this medieval armor wearing chick. She looks confused, almost like she was just grabbed herself. “Hey, you okay?”

She mumbles something in some weird language (Welsh?), then adds, “I’ll be fine, Captain. This is just a lot right now.”

“Hey, we’ll get through this. Sarge is one of the good ones.”